Torchlight Mobile Will Be Free-to-Play

In the week leading up to E3’s freight train full of new game announcements, some developers tried to get out in front of the pack. One such developer was Runic Games, creator and steward of the Torchlight series. Late last week the studio announced that they’d be bringing the series’ famed dungeon-diving to mobile devices in a new title: Torchlight Mobile.

As you might have expected, the game is playable on the show floor at E3. The few journalists that have had a chance to go hands on with it have had mostly positive things to say about it, but as Touch Arcade‘s Jared Nelson reports, there’s one reality that we’re all going to have to get used to:

Torchlight Mobile is free to play, and comes equipped with all the typical trappings of that monetization model. There’s an energy meter, and entering quests will cost you some energy each time, with harder quests typically costing more. There’s also two currencies, a soft coin currency which is earned in abundance during quests, and a premium gem currency which you will be able to earn through play by way of special events but will also be sold in IAP packs.

Diablo-style hack’n’slashes can work great as free-to-play titles (just look at KingsRoad), but there’s no question that core franchises adopting the F2P model tend to meet with plenty of resistance.

So long as you’re comfortable with some in-app purchases sprinkled into your dungeon crawling, it sounds like there’s a lot to like in Torchlight Mobile. Be sure to read Touch Arcade’s full hands-on, and keep an eye out for Torchlight Mobile to hit iOS and Android in Q4 2015.